all the world's a stage

As I reported Saturday morning for Dossier (click), it seems I'm not the only one who finds my subway landing to be somewhat cinematic.


Erin (my friend, neighbor, and editor at Dossier) and I will be keeping our eyes out for the Chanel ad starring our street. In the meantime this sign, left on South 5th, points directly towards home on Hooper.

We'll see what's on the script for 2010...

artichokes and rainbows

Here's the view from the kitchen window Saturday, after an afternoon deluge that left me soaked riding home on the J-Train.

Lo and behold, it continued to shine on Sunday for the Brooklyn Unfancy Food Show at the East River Bar, which brought out a flock of food-tattooed Williamsburgers.

A cupcake was cute, but I was partial to the artichoke, my very favorite of foods. I mean, could Pablo Neruda have written such an exquisite ode (click) to an ironic cupcake? I think not, he needed the "artichoke, with a tender heart, dressed up like a warrior." This one is tattooed onto the arm of Annaliese Griffin, of Brooklyn Based (click). She and Indrani Sen (click for her for take for The Times) were talking about people who write their own wedding vows when I snapped this photo.

As it turns out, I'm using Neruda's poem to renew my vows to my favorite food, "the artichoke, with a tender heart, dressed up like a warrior."

It was a great time, with kimchee-slanging D.J.s (click) makin' deals,

McClure's new beer-mustard basking in the sun (I may visit Bob's factory in Detroit next week)

and yummy Green Pirate juice for everyone--I concocted a combination of cantaloupe, cucumber and lime, which Indrani said was a natural combination since cantaloupes and cucumbers cross-pollinate, those frivolous fruits!

I also had a chance to chat with these cheerful cheesemongers from Consider Bardwell and Jasper Hill Farms.

They gave me some tips in preparation for my cheese-judging experience on Thursday, but I have to say, the intimidation continued when I found this photo of the judges in action at last year's competition!!


Which one do you think has a wedge of Jarlsberg tattooed onto their bicep underneath their lab coat?

sprung

I know it's not official until the 21st, but find Exhibit A:


I'm sparing you an audio slideshow of this picture of the ice cream truck outside my window, taken over and over with a looped soundtrack of the 20-second song it plays that ends with a voice going, "Hello!?" before it begins again.

But if you really miss me, I could send you something like that, and you could play it all day and pretend you're working from home with me.

So,yes, "Hello!?" Spring has sprung in New York.

second stop

The Second Stop Café is such a welcome new neighbor.
It could never front on Gimme! Coffee for the sheer joy of stooping it with the perfect (yes, perfect) cup to go--especially on a day like today when spring starts to make little sounds like she's starting to wake up.

But check it out: a big wooden table to work at, natural light, a ceramic "We are Happy to Serve You" cup of Stumptown coffee (New York's newest drug of choice, it seems) and a slice of lemon pie oozing with real sugar-soaked lemon slices and tart custard-y filling, topped by a flaky spelt crust.
I'll tell you what, it beats working in the newsroom.

the people who make pickles in your neighborhood

The New York Times ran this article yesterday about the new wave of Brooklynites who like to make their food the old-fashioned way. I too thought this was interesting, particularly as it pertained to pickles.

Back in September, when my graduate program required me to pitch an idea for a broadcast news package I simply said, "pickles are the new black?"

Our teacher (click) loved it, so my partner Lois Desocio and I were off an running. My strength proved to be hunting down picklers, while Lois was the savvier scriptwriter. Neither of us had ever done any work with film or editing, so while the result is rather amateur, we're also sort of proud of it.

Click To Play

Keep an eye for a few of the same faces from The Times' article, like Steven Manning and Bob McClure. A special prize goes to the first person to identify the girl in the mirror at the Bushwick Country Club.

Perhaps I would have posted this months ago, had I known an article on a similar subject would be The Times' most emailed story. The video may make you glad I chose to pursue print journalism over broadcast, but if Beth Linskey (click) doesn't make you smile you should have your pulse checked. Fast-forward to her, if you must.

This won't be the last of the pickle reports. Be warned.

night at the museum

Tonight I got to see the final moments of Pipilotti Rist's installation at MOMA. It was a special occasion, and the gallery was nearly empty, so it was lacking in the energy that Logan Hill listed as an example of #9 on New York Magazine's reasons to love New York: "Because the Avant-Garde is our Playpen."


Tonight it felt more like an aquarium than a playpen, or than a museum, for that matter. It certainly didn't feel like any MOMA I had ever known on a bright echoey afternoon. It was utterly silent as we came up the stairs under that spectacular green helicopter. Magnificent.


It's been a weekend of nights at museums. Friday found me at the City Reliquary, that cabinet of curios here in Williamsburg. You can read more about that night here, in my food file on Dossier. I'm still waiting for the opportunity to have a sleepover like Jerry Saltz's at the Guggenheim. In the meantime, my neighborhood museum and a quiet moment in the MOMA are reasons enough for me to love New York.

I heart art

TONIGHT!
May 8, 2008

I'll come back to this, but as I know some of you dear readers have limited attention spans, I'll get straight to the point: Come tonight, to the Riviera Gallery in Williamsburg, from 7-10 pm for the opening of the Fellow Traveler show. I'll come back to that, but for those of you who won't read on, the Riviera is around the corner from Relish in Williamsburg at 103 Metropolitan (map below). It's gonna be so fun and inspiring. Just come.

More info here: http://www.artcal.net/event/view/2/7105

I wrote an article for Mirth Magazine about one of the collections that will be on exhibit at the opening tonight. You can read it in the "Art" section of my website if you go here.

OK, back to my story:
The last month or so has been a lovely artistic journey, starting in San Francisco, my first stop on the way home from New Zealand.


Here is my favorite Bay Area artist, Marty Machado. Sometimes I get weirdly choked up when I think about how talented he is. He's pictured here with his brother Gary, who let me mash an avocado all over his face the first time we met.

Gary and Marty are good embodiments, in two very distinct ways, of Oscar Wilde's wonderful idea of making life your art, your days your sonnets. That is to say, that they generally have an awesome time and make things look the way they ought to, which makes them so fun to be with.

When I got to San Francisco I checked out Marty's newest project in beautiful basement/garden studio, where I got to see this stunning work underway:

Thirteen Rows At Dawn 2008 Oil, Watercolor, Fiberglass Cloth, Panel, Epoxy 36x63"

You can read more about that piece here, if you like, http://www.martinmachado.com/aboutthirteenrows.html

Marty and I rode to SFMOMA where we saw some Devendra Banhart drawings dispersed among the Paul Klees and William Henry Jackson photos from government-sponsored surveys of the old west, watched others contemplating Rothko and walked through a fractured rainbow tunnel.

.

Then I flew to LA, where the view from my window seat changed astonishingly fast from this:
to this:
I actually found LA really brilliant, hilarious and dazzling this time around though. For the first time I visited the Getty, which I loved loved loved. I felt it was everything that is great about LA.
Thanks mom, for taking me there.

Here are some kids on a field trip underneath a sundial that appears to be gracing them with a shower of sunshine and creative energy. Sorry to sense out, but I find kids and art to be an especially inspiring combination.

This brings me back to New York (finally!) to the Free Arts Benefit, which was last week. Volunteering for Free Arts (http://www.blogger.com/www.freeartsnyc.org) has been one of the few consistent elements of my last four years in New York. Usually it consists of showing up on a Saturday at an elementary school or shelter I've walked by a million times without noticing and buddying up with a kid or two for a day of outrageously cute art projects, pizza and performances.



Once a year, volunteering is a very different experience, which is the Free Arts Benefit, where celebrities and artists descend on the Philips de Pury auction space in the meatpacking district to get buzzed and buy art that will fund the programming for the following year of Free Arts Saturdays and mentoring programs. I observe all this with the odd anonymous protection of a black shirt and a silver catering tray full of emptied champagne glasses, tuna sashimi on lotus chips or something of that nature. The best part is getting to check out the pieces up for auction before the party begins. The Cecily Brown above was one of my favorites, and the Chuck Close Polaroid self-portrait below represented a good portion of the nearly 800 grand that Free Arts raised that night for next year's programs.


Speaking of Polaroids, all artistic hands are on deck lamenting the loss of the magical film, which will be discontinued. In New York Magazine Christopher Bonanos indicated the sad irony of Robert Mapplethorpe's Polaroid exhibit opening at the Whitney this week, but it's not the only coincidental tribute in town.


Last night I went to Jose Picayo's opening of Mug Shots at the Robin Rice Gallery, an exhibit of mug shots taken with a Deardorff camera and endangered 8 x 10 Polaroid film. Usually at these openings, everyone's always looking for the artist. Last night, people of all races, ages and backgrounds were looking for themselves. I'm there, behind the velvet rope for once.

On a balmy evening in the West Village, gallery-goers spilled onto West eleventh with their clear plastic cups of champagne. From the crowd in the streets I looked up toward the sunset and saw this:

Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi...

which I think is marvelous.

There I am in front of the door, which someone kindly opened and I even got to have a quick jaunt through the checker-boarded magical lobby. One day I'll dance around barefoot on the cool cement floors of my own palazzo, contemplating where to hang whatever fantastic piece I bought at that years Free Arts auction. But enough of that! For now, there is work to be done! Fellow Traveler opens tonight at the Riviera and as of last night, no work graced the walls, so off I went to Williamsburg.

Remember this map? Memorize it, it's where you ought to end up tonight.
So I hopped onto my bike, coincidentally the same color as the Palazzo Chupi, and rode over to the Riviera (Gallery).

There, Kevin Devine, Dan Funderburgh (+his own helper Jenny) and Justin Fines painted, leveled and secured in preparation for tonight's opening. Also on support was Dave Johnny, pictured below advising artist Justin Fines.

Speaking of Polaroids, Dave is a great champion of the medium. Enough has been written about the glorious fuzz of the Polaroid, the warm seventies nostalgic light that it lends to even the grittiest of images. If you want to revel in the joy of Polaroids for a little while, check out Dave's shots on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/davejohnny/collections/72157600205622555/

Dave Johnny

The moral of this long-winded story is, that like Kevin Devine's Monuments (on show tonight), the demise of Polaroid film and whatever was in Dave Johnny's cup remind us, it could all be gone in an instant. So we better have fun in the meantime. To Julian Schnabel, god bless him, this means towering a behemoth Tuscan villa on top of an existing building in the West Village. To Marty Machado, it means rowing at dawn for thirteen consecutive days in the San Francisco Bay. To me, this particular week, it meant toiling over homemade chicken stock in an effort to see if it really makes a difference (to be determined) and tonight it will mean going to the Riviera to party in celebration of young artists making it happen.

Hope to see you there.

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